By Water & Blood

Panarion 51, Chapter 20: The first sign at Cana after the temptation

For when everything concerning the baptism and the temptation had been completed, Jesus came thereafter and, as I have often said, spent a short time both in Nazareth and in its borders and about Capernaum; and after meeting John at the Jordan, and on the next day taking some of the disciples with him, he first performed this sign at Cana on the third day from John, but the twentieth from his return from the temptation, and begins the preaching.

For neither does he say that Christ came to a wedding before the temptation, nor did he work any of the divine signs at all before he began the preaching—except what is said of him in play, that he did certain things when he was a child.

For he had to have childhood signs as well, so that there might be no pretext for the other heresies to say that Christ came upon him from the Jordan—that is, the dove. For this they say because of the numerical value of omega and alpha, which is ‘dove,’ since the Savior said, ‘I am the Alpha and I am the Omega.’

Therefore also in the twelfth year of his birth Luke introduces Jesus speaking to Mary when she was seeking him, when he was conversing with the teachers in Jerusalem:

‘Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s things?’—so that the claim of those who say that he became Son of God from the time of the baptism, when the dove came upon him (which they say is the Christ), may fall; and so that it may be clearly known that from above the God Word sojourned and, coming, was incarnate from Mary, and that at the Jordan the Spirit descended upon him,

in order to signify who it is that is attested by the Father—‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him’—and so that this might become a pattern for those who are about to be enlightened in him: that they will be counted worthy of the Holy Spirit in the bath of the gift and of forgiveness of sins through the grace given by him.